Defense continues hammering police

Published 1:00 am, Tuesday, August 8, 2006

Defense witness Richard Hanft, left, is questioned by Terence Kindlon during the proceedings on Tuesday August 8, 2006.

Defense witness Richard Hanft, left, is questioned by Terence Kindlon during the proceedings on Tuesday August 8, 2006.

Photo: Michael P. Farrell

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Defense witness Alexandra Hallock holds her personal day planner while she is questioned by attorney Laurie Shanks Tuesday August 8, 2006.

Defense witness Alexandra Hallock holds her personal day planner while she is questioned by attorney Laurie Shanks Tuesday August 8, 2006.

Photo: Michael P. Farrell

Defense continues hammering police

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GOSHEN -- A longtime friend of Joan Porco contended this morning that police never followed up on her suspicions about damage to the family's telephone months before the 2004 ax attack in the Porco's Delmar home.

Additionally, a Troy divorce lawyer who worked with Peter Porco testified, recounting a threat on Peter's life from a disgruntled litigant in 1989.

``He left a message and I returned his phone call and I never heard from him again,'' Alexandra Hallock said of her interaction with a Bethlehem police detective a month after Peter, 52, was killed and Joan, now 55, was disfigured in the November 2004 assault.

Hallock, who said she has been friends with Joan Porco for 25 years, recounted that Joan in August 2004, told her ``My telephone box was tampered with.''

After the attack, Hallock then tried to relay that information to authorities but bumped up against a series of missed phone calls and meetings with law enforcement officials that were planned but which never took place.

Christopher Porco, 23, is charged with the murder of his father and attempted murder of his mother. Police say he drove home from the University of Rochester, committed the act with an ax that was in his parents' garage, left the ax on their bed, and returned to school.

But defense lawyers say police from the outset failed to follow other leads -- including the tampered phone line, and a 1989 threat against Peter Porco -- in their rush to judgment against Christopher.

After Hallock, a self-described stay-at-home mom who produced meticulous notes of her conversations with both Joan Porco before the attack and with police afterward, divorce lawyer Richard Hanft said he and Peter Porco, as well as then-Albany County Family Court Judge Anthony Cardona, all were threatened by Patrick DeLucia in 1989 after DeLucia lost custody of his children.

Hanft said he didn't pay much heed to the initial threat but took it more seriously after Hanft's lawyer produced an audiotape of the threat.

Chief Assistant District Attorney Michael McDermott attempted to rebut these theories. He suggested, for example, that Joan Porco ``suspected it was neighborhood kids,'' who tampered with their phones, although Hallock replied that ``she never said that.''

Prosecutors have previously noted that DeLucia now lives out of state and was not believed to be in the Delmar area during the 2004 attack. More defense witnesses are expected to testify today.